For those of you who know a little more about wine than how to open the bottle and quaff away, you will know that its heading towards harvest time with serious vooma now.

To keep you in the loop (and educate the rest of us) I sat down with our wine maker, Nikey, to see what he has been doing out in the vineyards in the last few weeks. In typical format, he gave me a short, concise list which I will do my best to expand on.

With around 2-3 weeks to go until we start harvesting on Haut Espoir, the staff and Nikey have been busy, over the last few weeks with (in no particular order):

Green Bunch Removal – this helps the bunches which are nearing harvest to get that extra little bit of nutrients, ensuring only the best fruit comes from the vine into the barrel or tank. Green bunches steal those nutrients, as there is only so much to go around and it gets divided quite equally.

Tipping and Lifting Vines – the vines tend to have a mind of their own, and would like to grow in all directions, even knocking the entire wire system out at times, so we have to guide them into the right paths and formats, lifting them back into the wire formats.

Side Shoot Removal – side shoots are much like green bunches, and are removed to make sure all the nutrients head for the bunches, and not into growing beautiful leaves. Leaves do not make great wines, so we trim the vines to make sure the maximum nutrients get to the bunches.

Those are just 3 things we have been doing here in the last few weeks. Nikey was off into the vines again and I managed to catch him for some information on the Juicing and Pressing procedures the following day, so look out for that post soon.